Welcome to the cortina community.

The Cortina Community prepares students to connect their passion for justice with their future goals by challenging them to investigate social inequalities and difficult realities in a vulnerable way. We do this through service, examination of faith, purposeful learning, and living in community.

There is a verse in the Bible that says “there is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear.” We don’t think we love perfectly, but when we participate in loving communities, we believe there is more courage to encounter the scary and unjust parts of our society and ourselves. When we’ve encountered them, we have the courage to stay and sit in the oftentimes painful and difficult realities. Our presence and work there transform us and those around us.

It is quite possible that we work with some of the coolest people in the city of Omaha. We are so thankful to them for allowing us to come participate in their work, weekly.

Our students go participate in what we like to call “relational service” every week. Students go to the same place each week so that they can build relationships and learn from those. Because of our great partnerships, we get to learn from people that we meet at community meals, community gardens, bike shops, schools, after school programs, ESL classes, GED classes, homeless shelter drop-in centers, & recovery celebration meetings. Students do about 3 hours of service at their site each week. All students are transported to-and-from service in a Creighton van with a van-certified driver.

Every Sunday evening, the community comes together to delve into a topic for an hour. Some of our time will be filled with a speaker or panel of speakers, film or documentary, or activity. Many times, we break off into small groups to process the topic with one another. Conversation is rich and time together is sweet. But also, we are a pretty diverse community, so sometimes we have a lot of work to do during this time.

Each Fall semester, all sophomore students take Philosophical Ethics (PHL 271). This is a core requirement for Creighton students but, (lucky us!) we get to take it in separate classes where not only are ethics discussed, but they are discussed and integrated with the experiences we are having at our service sites in the Omaha community.

In the Spring, Cortina students take another course of the MAGIS core curriculum together, Social Justice in the Old Testament (THL 217). The course focuses on what the Bible says about social justice and how you can apply these principles to contemporary social justice issues, like the ones you see at your service site.

Rest and celebration are important parts of life. So we go on retreats to rest, to celebrate, to envision the development of our community. Each semester there is a planned retreat for all community members. The Fall retreat is overnight and the Spring retreat is a day-long.